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Background
| Teaching Assistantship Advantages | Research
Assistantship Advantages
- They are often less
time consuming: While research assistants are asked to spend
10-20 hours in the lab each week, teaching assistants are only asked
to get the job done. The job is to teach your class and grade the homework
that you assign. At first, this may take you 20 hours a week. You can
spend a lot of time preparing lectures and writing exams. But often
times, graduate students are asked to teach the same course semester
after semester. Once you prepare your course materials, there is quite
a bit of a time savings. It's a good idea to update your lectures and
exam materials each term. But these updates really don't take much time.
After a few semesters of teaching the same course, you will probably
discover that you are only spending 5-7 hours teaching each week. That
gives you a lot more time for your studies when compared to research
assistants who have to absolutely put in 10-20 hours per week, every
week.
- Looks great on the
Academic Vita if you want to become a teaching professor: If
you want to eventually become a teaching professor, you are going to
have to get some teaching experience. Faculty search committees looks
for candidates with teaching experience when selecting the their new
faculty. If you accept a teaching assistantship, you will have experience
when you apply.
- Looks great on a
resume under your Communication / Presentation skills section:
Some grad students do not plan on going into academia after graduate
school. Instead, they plan on applying for industry jobs. Employers
in industry typically want you to be an expert in your subject specialty
and have good written and verbal communication skills. After teaching
a variety of college classes, you can safely say that you have lots
of experience presenting your ideas others. This looks good on a resume
that is being submitted for employment in industry.
- Helps you learn
your subject specialty: Teaching a course on a particular topic,
and especially having to explain course topics to undergraduates, is
a great way to really get to know your subject specialty. By taking
on a teaching assistantship, you will become very well versed in your
field.
Compare this to... Research
Assistantship Advantages
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